Boring was just fine this time
AUGUSTA, Ga. – Boring? A Masters Tournament? Absolutely. B-o-r-i-n-g.
Anyway, it was boring – deadly dull, in fact – until right near the end, when Zach Johnson dipped along with the thermometer, but only just enough to make things mildly interesting.
It was cold enough to be unpleasant out there for everybody but Johnson. He will take this weather any time he can shoot another 69 for that 289 total and beat Tiger Woods, Rory Sabbatini and Retief Goosen by two shots for one of the most prized championships in all sport.
So it came out as anything but tingling stuff for anyone except Johnson. He doesn’t need exciting, doing exactly what he did, which was beating all these excellent players.
He more than beat Tiger. He buried him. Two strokes down might not be bad for anybody else. For Tiger, it is.
“Perseverence and patience,” Johnson summed up his day. “You can hit great shots out here and just misjudge things just a little bit and end up in big trouble.”
Occasionally it looked as though Johnson was going down, with Tiger ready to give him a final whack. But every time that happened, the usually suspenseful little world of Augusta National turned back to unexciting beyond our most dullardly imaginings, and stayed that way, so, so sweetly for Zachary Harry Johnson.
Tiger had one chance to make it close with a second shot 134 yards from the last pin. He didn’t even come close.
Zach Johnson?
His best finish in a major had been a tie for 17th way behind champion Phil Mickelson in the 2005 PGA.
Sunday he came out of beyond nowhere, and then won laughing.
“I’ve dreamt about this for years,” Johnson said.
Everybody does.
This is a 31-year-old Iowa native now residing in the Central Florida outpost of Lake Mary. At least one entity, CBS-TV, certainly wasn’t rooting for him because it’s selling drama, and Johnson came in here with practically zero sales appeal.
So, b-o-r-i-n-g. That isn’t a kindly thing to say, but it’s too true to suit the network. The tube people always root for Tiger Woods because he is the man the whole world watches, and Sunday he was so consistently denied a chance that he burst out, “What the hell just happened?” after another failed birdie try on the 17th hole.
How bad was it for Tiger?
He shot par on a course that played awfully hard, and he still didn’t come close.
How good was it for Zach?
Golfers will remember his name as long as the game is played, if he never hits another lick. He took a mean day – cold enough to chill you over a course so hard it would shiver your feet just to step on it – and bent it to his will.
Zach just drained out all the drama.
“Zach, what a great round,” defending champion Phil Mickelson said, draping the jacket across Johnson’s shoulders in the traditional ceremony in Butler Cabin.
True enough, Sunday, Goosen and Rory Sabbatini played as well as Johnson. You have to play better when you’re as far back as they started.
Thus, the finish was as flat as it was cold.
When Johnson birdied No. 16 to lead by three, this was history, though not the sort that will be replayed forever on TV like the torrid comebacks of Jack Burke from eight behind or Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player from seven back.
Of the whole day, Johnson said, “Whew.”
And that was about as wild as anything got.